It’s by design. Divide and conquer has been the playbook since they (anti-labor think tanks like the Progressive Policy Institute and others that seek to keep labor infighting) started studying group psychology.

You make this argument and it immediately falls apart because people revert to “Well they want to do this, this, and this, so they actually are an enemy”

You see it here in these very comments. If you are different from the “normal” you will eventually be hated, regardless of whoever is in power. It is human nature. It has not changed, it will not change.

People, families, tribes, nations have risen to power and subsequently lost power. It’s cyclical and will continue until we are inevitably wiped out by ourselves or the universe.

Yeah, but also people have very different ideas of what good life is, and what stops them from having it.

The major difference is money. We should be banding together against the rich, but instead we distract ourselves with what we look like, what we sound like, where we come from, what team (sports, town, city, state, country, …) we support, which sex we have, and a bunch of other things that divide us.

This is true, but some of us are actually very different. That’s not always a bad thing, either.

I only see people as an enemy if they’ve declared themselves as such. I’m not gonna make the first move, life is too short to make enemies with everyone I meet. That said, if you’ve got a swastika tattooed on your forehead then I’m gonna take that as a declaration that you’re my enemy.

Idk one side wants to enslave, murder, and rape. The other does not.

Let’s just be friends as they take away my rights and everyone I love rights away, we shouldn’t be enemies as they hunt down and murder someone for “existing”

Maybe we shouldn’t be friends with the enemy and fight against the regime?

This is one of the was Nazis came into power, by manipulating the mass thinking “oh we should all be friends” and now look what happened.

-a trans non-binary disabled person

Amen.

What the people who want to control us don’t want us to realize is that you have a lot more in common with the Chinese/Russian/Ukrainian/Mexican/Indian working class… Factory worker/programmer/hard-working house wife… Then you do with your own political leaders and billionaires. People with servants who don’t ever worry about bills. (Biden, Trump, Harris, Vance, Elon, Gates, Bezos, etc)… Don’t look at the foreigners as different and the enemy… Look at the Rich and the Politicians (who want us to blame the foreigners)

I have been struggling with this lately. I am staunchly anti violence and anti war, and yet, I am conflicted on how far I truly would be willing to go to cull classism, fascism, racism, transphobia , homophobia, misogyny, and pedophilia from the world.

These things are abhorrent to me, and I wonder how much of my humanity I’d be willing to sacrifice in exchange for even one of these to no longer being in existence amongst the ranks of humanity.

How much good does pacifism give to the world in promoting the better angels of our nature? How much harm does it do when those same principles allow the worst among us to march down our roads and drag away our loved ones in the night?

Two scenes from media I consume have lately continually resurfaced in my mind. One is this scene from Vinland Saga, where the main character’s father confronts him when he finds his sword. The father is about to go off to war, and somberly asks his son who he wants to kill with his father’s sword. This culminates with the father, who again, is about to go off to war, emphatically declaring to his son that he has no enemies, that there is no such thing as enemies.

The other is this scene from Star Wars Andor, in which a high level spy of a burgeoning Rebellion is asked by a compatriot (who wishes to quit fighting the Empire due to possibly being found out), asks what he sacrifices for the fight against the Empire. The monologue he delivers is chilling, acknowledging he sacrifices all things that make him human, he becomes like his enemy in order to defeat them. When he reflects on the question, and asks, “So what do I sacrifice? Everything!”

That…is what I believe I will have to give up in order for there to be a sunrise for the people I love tomorrow. I’ll have to give up my humanity, everything. And I am afraid. I am selfish. I don’t want to. But I don’t know any other way.

The feelings that scene stir up in me resonate because that is how I feel when I think on the fascist cancer that has once again metastasized in America. Having no enemies… if only. Truly. Having enemies robs me of my humanity, because in fighting them I must bury my humanity. And I know that once I do that, there’s no going back. There will be no redemption.

The thing I am struggling with is… am I the one who makes them my enemies? Or are they? And if the only thing we can agree on is that we are enemies…then what choice do we have when they come for me and those I claim as my kin?

No. Some people want to control other people because of their various sky daddies or a simple greed. And those are the ones fucking up your life. Everyone else could more or less get along, but fanatics, billionaires and other people hungry for control of others are actively make sure we don’t.

Paradox of tolerance

Some are fascists. Some are not. That’s a pretty big distinction.

I’m not sure that’s true. One side has empathy. The other does not. I don’t want to be friends with someone who doesn’t have empathy.

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

Yup we’re all idiots